US 'Baseline killer' sentenced to death

A US jury has sentenced a man to death for murdering nine people during a Phoenix crime spree that became known as the Baseline killings.

The jurors' verdict on Wednesday came about a month after they found 47-year-old Mark Goudeau guilty of the nine murders and 58 other charges, including kidnapping and rape.

They sentenced him to death on each of the nine murder counts.

Goudeau was accused of attacking his victims as they went about daily activities, such as leaving work or washing their car.

He left most of them with their pants unzipped and partially pulled down.

Police named the series of killings and other crimes after Baseline Road in south Phoenix where many of the earliest attacks happened.

Goudeau's lawyer, Randall Craig, declined to comment after the sentencing, citing an appeal he planned to file.

Goudeau had been serving a 438-year sentence in a 2005 sexual assault case tied to the Baseline Killer attacks, but only recently became eligible for the death penalty after his murder convictions.

Prosecutors had argued that Goudeau was a "ravenous wolf" driven by a hunger to rape women and kill those who didn't co-operate with his demands, and that the murders were especially cruel because the victims suffered unimaginable terror and anguish in the moments leading up to their deaths.

Prosecutor Patricia Stevens said each of the eight female victims were forced to agonise over whether they would be raped or killed in the moments before they were shot, and that two of them were forced to watch Goudeau kill another person before he turned the gun on them, prolonging and intensifying their own terror.

Defence lawyers had argued that factors stemming from Goudeau's childhood set him up to become the man he was today and that he should be spared from the death penalty.

The body of his first murder victim, 19-year-old Rebecca Thompson, was found in a parking lot in September 2005, a bullet to her head, an arm across her eyes and keys still in her hand.